Jeffery West Finds Its Feet with Office 365

The Cloud vs on premise debate is one that affects many businesses, with companies typically opting for what they perceive to be the safe option of keeping everything onsite and in house. However, no one can deny that the Cloud offers tangible benefits that shouldn’t be overlooked, including better accessibility for remote workers, improved security and reliability and even financial savings.

For esteemed British footwear designersJeffery West & Co, switching to Office 365 was a no brainer. With stores across the UK and in New York, upgrading from their old SBS server was essential to the collaborative efforts of their sales force.

Mark Jeffery, from Jeffery West, said: “The main motivation for us to move to Office 365 was the improved document and data visibility and collaboration that it offers to our remote workers. Geographically our sales team may be scattered, but through the use of Sharepoint and Skype, we can bring them all together in real time to get things done. Important documents can be shared and organised much more efficiently and accessed from almost any device with an internet connection. Emails can be received and responded to much more easily, which has immediately increased productivity.”

So, Office 365 wins hands down on accessibility over on premise solutions, but what about security? There’s a common misconception that Cloud storage is less secure than onsite options, but for businesses who have this concern, they can rest assured this is not the case. Office 365 applications are encrypted, so if a transmission is intercepted by an unauthorised party they won’t be able to read it. Microsoft also ensures all antivirus signatures are up to date and constantly monitors for suspicious activity.